Have you ever been the victim of environmental racism? You
probably have and not even known it. And, more than likely, it
was the government that discriminated against you.

If you ask someone from a liberal environmental group like
Greenpeace or the Sierra Club to define environmental racism,
they'll say it is when a big business comes into a poor or minority
area and takes advantage of the community because it has more
political clout than the residents. An example might be that a
garbage dump was intentionally placed in a majority-black neighborhood
simply because the people who lived there couldn't fight back.

There's no disputing this is bad, and that it should be stopped.
Environmental racism, however, is much broader than what environmentalists
say.

Environmental activists, who promote expanding the power of
government to right perceived environmental wrongs, always seems
to look the other way when government commits acts of environmental
racism through overregulation and high taxes.

When the Clinton Administration dramatically raised fuel taxes,
it hurt the poor - many of whom are minorities - the most. Bill
Gates and his wife pay the same taxes on gas and heating oil as
a couple in South Central Los Angeles, but the Gates family loses
a significantly lower percentage of their income to pay that tax
than the residents of South Central. While paying the tax is virtually
nothing to Gates, it may force the South Central couple to choose
between hot water and a stove or driving.

Arbitrary taxes like the Clinton fuel tax discriminate because
they take more from those who have less.

Has the Clinton Administration, in the name of environmental
justice, moved to abolish the fuel tax? Of course not. And to
save us from the yet-to-be-proven idea that the earth is getting
hotter, they are proposing even tougher standards and taxes on
fuels.

Is this justice? No, it is the new millennium's preferred brand
of institutional racism - and it is being perpetrated in the name
of "saving" the environment.

Overregulation is hurting those it is supposed to help. To
fight alleged environmental racism, the federal government has
pledged to stop big business from picking on minorities. Often,
it comes at the expense of well-paying jobs in minority communities
- jobs people need to pull themselves and their families out of
the cycle of poverty.

In Convent, Louisiana, residents of this majority-black community
welcomed the construction of a $700 million plastics factory.
They looked forward to Shintech, Inc. bringing them good jobs
with health benefits and creating a stronger tax base for their
community. However, environmental groups from outside the area
- backed by the Environmental Protection Agency - challenged construction
of the factory because they thought it was a violation of the
community's "right" to environmental justice. They claimed
people in the area were already prone to cancer that might increase
with the new factory, and that Shintech, Inc. was taking advantage
of the people of Convent. Rather than fight, Shintech, Inc. built
elsewhere - in the white community of Addis, Lousiana.

If the government regulators were concerned about civil rights,
they should have consulted the NAACP. The local NAACP supported
building the factory. As for the residents of Convent, 73% of
them welcomed Shintech, Inc. to their community. But their voices
fell on deaf ears in Washington.

Environmentalists won the day, leaving Convent the loser. The
predominantly black community, with its long history of poverty
and unemployment, lost the potential for 2,000 construction jobs
and 165 new permanent positions that the factory would create.
Jobs that would pay $12 an hour, double the community average
of $6 an hour in the sugar cane fields. The high cancer rate cited
by the environmentalists turned out to be false, like the majority
of environmentalists' claims. In fact, the high cancer mortality
rate was due to not enough cases being caught soon enough - a
situation that would have improved had Shintech, Inc. been allowed
to build in Convent.

True environmental inequity is a problem. However, racism by
any name and using any guise is an affront to us all. We need
to remind the government that real environmental justice would
stop people from abusing our community by raising the false specter
of racism.

###

(John Meredith is a member of the African-American leadership
network Project 21 and is a board member of two community-based
non-profit organizations, a consultant for an educational organization
and the national co-chairman of minority outreach for an independent
election monitoring organization. He can be reached at [email protected].)

Note: New Visions Commentaries reflect the views
of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21.